It says that it would be absurd to judge by the figure, to condemn organs of whose uses we are ignorant, which are principally the tools of special professions, the instruments of a hundred trades; that it, the insect, is the great destroyer and fabricator, the most industrious of artisans, the energetic workman of life. And, finally, it says (this pretension will perhaps appear most arrogant), that if we judge by visible signs, by works and results, it is It, among all beings, which loves most truly. Love endows it with wings, with a marvellous iris of colours, and even with visible flames. Love is for _it_ the instantaneous or approaching death, with an astonishing _second sight_ of maternity which continues over the orphan an ingenious superintendence. And lastly, the maternal genius extends so far, that, surpassing and eclipsing the rare associations of birds and quadrupeds, it has enabled the Insect to create republics and establish cities! [Illustration] I admit that this weighty plea has made an impression on me. If thou toilest and lovest, O Insect, whatever may be thy aspect, I cannot separate myself from thee. We are truly somewhat akin. For what am I myself, but a worker? What has been my greatest happiness in this world? Our communion of action and destiny will open my heart, and give me a new sense with which to understand thy silence. Love--the divine force which circulates in all things, like an universal soul--is the interpreter through whose agency our insects discourse and understand each other without speech. [Illustration] [Illustration] II. OUR STUDIES AT PARIS AND IN SWITZERLAND. In the prolonged perusal of naturalists and travellers by which we prepared ourselves for writing "The Bird," and for which nothing less was required than the patience of a solitary woman, we gathered on the way a number of facts and details which presented the Insect to our eyes under the most varied aspects. The Insect appeared to us incessantly in company with the Bird,--here like a harmony, there as an antagonism,--but too often in profile, and as a subordinate being. I was in the middle of the sixteenth century, and while engaged for about three years in historical studies, my knowledge on this point was collected only by means of extracts, readings, and conversations every evening. The various elements of this grand study I acquired through the medium of a soul eminently gentle towards the things of nature, and generously given to love the weak; whose loyal and patient affection, indefinitely extending curiosity, picked up, so to speak, like the ant, and as so many grains of sand, the materials which we found less frequently in the more important works than in an infinity of memoirs and scattered dissertations.